The aim of this research was to analyse the use of olive oil as a means of prevention and treatment of sports injuries in the ancient world. The method adopted was based on a thorough study of Greek and world literature. Writings of major ancient philosophers and physicians such as Hippocrates, Aristotle, Philostratus, and Lucian have been analysed in depth. According to the results, the use of massage, together with olive oil rub, helped to reduce muscle fatigue, to remove lactic acid, and to prevent the occurrence of sports injuries through flexibility provided to the skin of athletes. The therapeutic use of oil in the ancient world was fully recognized; and as a result Athenian athlothetes (sponsors of sporting events) provided free oil to all sport facilities where athletes could make free use of it [1].

This paper identifies two distinctive features of ancient constitutional design that have largely disappeared from the modern world: constitution-making by single individuals and constitution-making by foreigners. We consider the virtues and vices of these features, and argue that under plausible conditions single founders and outsider founders offer advantages over constitution-making by representative bodies of citizens, even in the modern world. We also discuss the implications of adding single founders and outsider founders to the constitutional toolkit by describing how constitutional legitimacy would work, and how constitutional interpretation would be conducted, under constitutions that display either or both of the distinctive features of ancient constitutional design.

Is inequality largely the result of the
Industrial Revolution? Or, were pre-industrial incomes and
life expectancies as unequal as they are today? For want of
sufficient data, these questions have not yet been answered.
This paper infers inequality for 14 ancient, pre-industrial
societies using what are known as social tables, stretching
from the Roman Empire 14 AD, to Byzantium in 1000, to
England in 1688, to Nueva España around 1790, to China in
1880 and to British India in 1947. It applies two new
concepts in making those assessments - what the authors call
the inequality possibility frontier and the inequality
extraction ratio. Rather than simply offering measures of
actual inequality, the authors compare the latter with the
maximum feasible inequality (or surplus) that could have
been extracted by the elite. The results, especially when
compared with modern poor countries, give new insights in to
the connection between inequality and economic development
in the very long run.

In conformity with its objective of
functioning as a local Government, Kathmandu Metropolitan
City (KMC) sought the assistance of the World Bank for the
preparation of a City Development Strategy (CDS) for
Kathmandu. The various sectoral as well as integrated
strategies presented in this document seem to be an
overwhelming demand on KMC with its limited manpower and
money. However, a CDS is essential if KMC is to focus its
development potential. The optimism lies in political
leadership, enabling environment and necessary support that
will be rendered to KMC from civil society. The vision for
Kathmandu stresses the need to develop the valley as
administrative, cultural and tourism center. The strategy to
move towards that vision through improvement in the overall
situation of the KMC, however, is likely to be a long drawn
struggle, yet achievable. The urban planning study strongly
recommends that Kathmandu should be accorded special status
as a capital city and large polluting and manufacturing
industries should be discouraged immediately and if
possible...

In conformity with its objective of
functioning as a local Government, Kathmandu Metropolitan
City (KMC) sought the assistance of the World Bank for the
preparation of a City Development Strategy (CDS). The
various sectoral as well as integrated strategies presented
in this document seem to be an overwhelming demand on KMC
with its limited manpower and money. A CDS is essential if
KMC is to focus its development potential. The optimism lies
in political leadership, enabling environment and necessary
support that will be rendered to KMC from civil society. The
vision for Kathmandu stresses the need to develop the valley
as administrative, cultural and tourism center. The strategy
to move towards that vision through improvement in the
overall situation of the KMC, however, is likely to be a
long drawn struggle, yet achievable. The urban planning
study strongly recommends that Kathmandu should be accorded
special status as a capital city and large polluting and
manufacturing industries should be discouraged immediately
and if possible...

The present study deals with two primary aims; (1) geological, mineralogical, and geochemical investigations of the Deh Hosein, Astaneh, and Nezam Abad mineralizations in the Astaneh-Sarband area, west central Iran, with the aim to understand the characteristics of the occurrences and their conditions of formation, and (2) geochemical investigations on ancient bronze artifacts from Iran and Western Asia in order to compare their characteristics with the high-tin copper ore of Deh Hosein and examine their possible relationship.
The Astaneh-Sarband area is located in the northern part of the NW-SE aligned Sanandaj-Sirjan metamorphic belt and consists mainly of Mesozoic schists, Middle Jurassic to Middle Tertiary intrusive rocks and related contact metamorphic aureoles, and pegmatites. Regional metamorphism in the area has reached a peak of greenschist facies, but further metamorphism has occurred locally, associated with granitoid emplacement. Magmatism has produced large felsic to intermediate intrusive bodies along a general northwest trend. The main trend of the faults, fractures and other structural features of the area is NW-SE.
The Deh Hosein prospect is mainly hosted by Jurassic meta-sedimentary rocks, which have been intruded by the Astaneh complex. Mineralization continues into the southern part of the Astaneh intrusion. The meta-sedimentary rocks consist of alternating meta-sandstone...

Thesis (PhD) - Indiana University, History, 2007; Modern classicists have examined the function of the Amazon legend in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds for over 150 years, using a variety of methods and theories to explain the popularity and meaning of the warrior women as evidence of matriarchal societies, cultural taboos, and social anxieties, often without historical context. My research deliberately uses a historical approach to test previous conclusions about the Amazons and reveals a dynamic Greek culture where individual authors constantly competed and contributed to the developing legend. I have applied a modified theory of narratology to four specific Greek authors: Herodotus, Diodorus, Strabo, and Plutarch. I explored each author's work on three levels: the story itself (the narrative), how each story fits within each author's similar work (the metanarrative), and how it differs from previous or contemporary variations (the cultural metanarrative). This revealed the dynamic nature of the legend as well as the creativity and motivation of each individual author. Although the Amazons themselves had a specific definition as a tribe of female warriors, different pairings of heroes with Amazons or discussions of imagined Amazon societies allowed ancient authors to use them in a variety of ways. Herodotus broke free from the traditional hero-kills-Amazon legend to address their political meaning. Diodorus returned to the heroic legend but utilized embellished stories to position specific heroes as greater than others. Strabo decried embellishments as evidence of poor scholarship and pointed out contradictions between the variations. Plutarch used specific heroic legends as moral measurements of good leadership. The Amazon legends and these writers' treatment of them are a window upon a changing Greek culture.

The rich cultural heritage of China is
an essential touchstone of its collective identity. The
country's archaeological sites, historic architecture,
expressive arts, cultural landscapes, and ethnic diversity
also are treasured around the world. Despite their
importance, China's cultural assets are under
tremendous pressure due to the country's rapid
development, particularly its rapid urbanization. Moreover,
rising incomes and mobility have significantly increased
domestic tourism, leading to the overdevelopment and
deterioration of cultural heritage sites. However, many of
China's government officials, conservationists, and
community groups have recognized these threats and, over the
past several decades, have worked tirelessly to protect
their country's cultural heritage. Based on the 12
projects developed under this partnership, this report
presents an overview of the project approaches and
experiences, takes stock of the challenges, extracts initial
lessons learned, and identifies new directions and
challenges ahead. The principal audience of the report is
national...

In June 2006, the Guizhou Tourism
Administration's Guizhou Provincial Rural Tourism
Development Plan was approved by the National Tourism
Administration of The People's Republic of China
(CNTA). This plan provides official strategic guidance for
the development of the rural tourism sector and identifies
around 160 villages for development. The proposals for Bank
finance are primarily located within rural villages. Based
on an assessment of their tourism appeal and location, 60 of
the 160 sites identified in the Guizhou Provincial Rural
Tourism Development Plan have been prioritized for
development over the next five years under the loan being
sought from the World Bank. The proposal provides a
conceptual development plan for 60 sites, including
development and financial models, products to be marketed,
and involvement of a range of stakeholders including private
investors, NGOs and rural tourism associations. The
consultants are encouraged by the proposals that provide for
participation of local communities...

Qufu and Zoucheng are two neighboring
county-level cities in Jining Municipality, a poor area in
the South-West of Shandong Province. The area was home to
some of China's earliest civilizations, and rich in
cultural heritage assets. Cultural heritage assets in the
project area include the Confucius temple, Kong family
mansion, and burial grounds complex, a United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
world heritage site, as well as over 100 national-level
cultural heritage assets. Qufu has a population of 640,000,
covers an area of 896 k

The “seeds of disease” theory that emerged in Europe during the Renaissance period was not an entirely novel concept at the time. Humans were aware of the contagious properties of certain afflictions long before it was possible for them to observe the microorganisms responsible for disease transmission, and ancient authors had already speculated about the existence of imperceptible creatures as a cause of illness. This thesis will show that through ancient literary works of every type permeates the recognition of disease contagion not only between humans, but also between animals of the same species, animals of different species and between humans and animals. Chapter One will examine cases of intra-species infection, beginning with those that do not specify precisely the manner in which the illness in question is passed from one being to another. Instances in which particular factors are noted as contributing to the spread of disease will also be presented, followed by examples highlighting the recognition of intra-species infection in animals. Chapter Two will address the three varieties of inter-species infection of which ancient people were evidently aware: zoonosis, anthroponosis, and xenoosis. Chapter Three will explore the prevalent belief among the ancients that uninterred corpses incited pestilences. Chapter Four will discuss ancient views concerning the contamination of drinking water...

This dissertation is centered around two related questions: How does literature contribute to the creation of identity? How does narrative locate individuals in the world? It studies how both individual and ethnic identity is shaped by the imagined landscapes encountered by the protagonists of the Greek novel over the course of their journeys. In this dissertation, I develop a model for reading the protagonists' travels across the Mediterranean as an integral part of the genre's narrative strategy. I begin by tracing the novels’ conceptual geographies of the Mediterranean world and the relationship between geographical movement and narrative. The core of my project examines three aspects of the imaginary worlds encountered by the novels’ protagonists: exotic animals, the relationship between humans and their natural landscapes, and exotic societies, customs, and religions. My study ends in Meroë, in the tenth and final book of Heliodoros’ Aithiopika. Meroë is a terminus in two senses: located on the edge of the known world, it is the most exotic of any place visited in the extant novels; it also represents the undoing of exoticism. Heliodoros’ novel describes a gradual process in the course of which Meroë becomes a Greek cultural enclave in an alien land...

This article takes up the subject of shared memory and its interaction with landscape, with specific reference to Troy, to Homer's Iliad, and to the tradition of 'pilgrimage' to Troy and its environs that evolved in the ancient world in response to the Trojan War story. Over the course of centuries this particular location on the Hellespont, a Bronze Age site, exercised a particular fascination, thanks to memories-no doubt gravely distorted-of a great siege by combined Greek forces eager to avenge, as legend tells it, the abduction of Helen. A few centuries later, the site became a destination for 'pilgrims' who were eager to see for themselves the landscape of Troy and the Troad and to experience for themselves, physically and emotionally, certain actions that were attributed to the heroes of the so-called Trojan War.

Late Antiquity is now consolidated both as a field of studies and as a historical period. However, from the time of its inception to its “explosion”, to use an expression of Andrea Giardina, this periodization has posed important historiographic questions that remain unexplored. By focusing the attention of scholars and students in general on the continuities between the ancient world and the period that follow it, late Antiquity leaves aside issues that were of crucial importance to traditional historians; some of these issues remain relevant, however, as in the case of the so-called fall of the Roman Empire. In this article, we intend to consider these issues, taking into account the important developments observed in recent decades.; A Antiguidade tardia está hoje consolidada seja como campo de estudos ou como um período histórico. No entanto, desde sua concepção até a sua “explosão”, para usarmos uma expressão de Andrea Giardina, esta periodização colocou questões historiográficas de imensa importância que permanecem pouco exploradas. Ao chamar a atenção de estudiosos e leitores em geral para as continuidades entre o mundo antigo e o período que o seguiu, a Antiguidade tardia deixa de lado importantes questões que eram fundamentais para uma historiografia mais tradicional e que continuam relevantes como o problema da assim chamada queda do Império romano. Neste artigo...